Scouring the Business of Technology

The Kaizendo Project

Engines for Education posted the problems with education here. And the following is an excerpt of CNN interview with skr:

Sir Ken Robinson says our education system works like a factory. It’s based on models of mass production and conformity that actually prevent kids from finding their passions and succeeding, he said.

Instead of trying to mass-produce children who are good at taking tests and memorizing things, schools should emphasize personal development, Robinson said. Not all kids are good at the same things, and the education system shouldn’t pretend they should all turn out the same, he said.

“We can’t just improve [schools],” he said. “We have to radically transform them.”

Schools today are “preoccupied with certain types of ability,” he said.

But since education is an institution, we need institutional solutions to solve institutional problems. For education, there is just so much inertia to introduce suggestions, let alone drastic reforms. So for a start, we need a modest bootstrap and that’s where the Kaizendo project kicks in.

Kaizendo aims to produce textbooks in the same fashion as free software.

Just as the noble goal of free software is free production and distribution of software, Kaizendo’s goal is customize textbooks according to student’s interests, abilities, life’s situation, availability and the like. The students are the first-class entities around which authors, parents and the ecosystem revolve.

The project is still in its very early stages. The business model is not there yet, the goal is ambitious but worthwhile. Any help is most welcome. Visit kaizendo.org for more info.